Page 2 of The Mer-Mate

I thought death would be darker.

It feels like I thought it might. I’m weightless, floating.

Peaceful.

A current is buffeting me, like being rocked in a cradle. My breath feels heavy, but strangely bracing, like the insides of my lungs have been scoured clean of a lifetime of dirt.

How am I breathing if I’m dead?

I blink my eyes open, and the searing burn floods back, and I slam them shut again.

I take another, laboured inhalation, and try to make sense of where I am. A diffuse light surrounds me. Not the mottled sky of the storm, or even the bright sun of the morning I left behind on shore. It’s almost like twilight.

I run my hands over my body, only finding bare skin. My slicker and overalls and boots … all gone. Still, I’m cool, but not cold, and oddly supported. Like simply existing is effortless. I turn my head in a sw ish of bubbles, and the reality of where I am slams into me.

I’m underwater.

Oh god. I haven’t died yet. I’m still drowning.

Panic jolts me to my senses as I try to sit up, but I'm already floating, so I just spin in place. Water is pressing in all around me, filling my mouth. There’s no up. I slam my mouth shut, holding my breath, struggling to ... what?

I was so close.

Tears spring behind my eyelids, burning more than the salt of the ocean. My lungs heave against the lack of oxygen. I thrash, and something slick and smooth grazes my wrists.

Dying was bad enough the first time I thought it was happening. This? This is torture. How many times do I have to go through this?

Even the soft twilight is fading as my breath runs out. Whatever is binding my wrists firms the more I struggle against it, until I can’t fight anymore. Instinct takes over and my lungs pull in sea water.

And the burning goes away.

I exhale, and warm water flows from my mouth. Experimentally, I pull water into my mouth again. It’s harder than breathing air, but I’m breathing . My chest expands as my lungs fill with the cold ocean, and I feel more awake than I ever have in my life.

I’m breathing water.

I’m not dead, but apparently I just became an aquatic fucking creature.

Adrenaline floods my system, and a manic laugh erupts from my throat, ending in a tiny stream of bubbles. It sounds like a laugh, but ... not.

Because sound travels differently underwater.

Which is where I currently am. Breathing.

Maybe it wasn’t impossible.

When I peel my eyes open, the salt burns less, though everything is still blurry.

Not so blurry that I can’t make out the dark shape looming in front of me.

Whatever it is, it’s huge . It moves with the current flowing around me. It’s only when I reach out to touch it that I realize it’s what is tethered to my wrists, restricting my movements, and I flounder to free myself.

“Stop struggling.”

The deep voice resonates around me, and I freeze, my hair clouding what little vision I had.

It sounded like English. Not quite like listening to words above the surface. Clearer. I want to stick my finger in my ear and wiggle, because it sounds like the voice is coming from the shape hovering in front of me.

Which would be crazy.

A pop of laughter escapes my throat like champagne being opened. I experiment, opening and closing my mouth, watching the last of the bubbles leave my lungs. “Like a fish.”

“I am not a fucking fish,” the shape says sharply, and I freeze again.

He—I can’t be positive, but a voice that deep feels male—moves closer to me. Hands tilt my head. They’re firm, dominant, but careful. Something cold slithers against my squinted eyelid, then the other, and I’m released to float free.

“Open.”

I obey, and the world around me resolves into clarity.

Holy fuck, he has a tail.

This isn’t happening. I wasn’t on my boat. I was on a dive, and I wasn’t paying attention to my gauges. Nitrogen narcosis has set in and I’m hallucinating. That has to be it.

Any second now, Sebastian or Ursula will show up and break into song.

I reach up to my mouth, expecting to find my regulator’s mouthpiece, but all I feel is my lips.

This isn’t a hallucination.

My heart crowds into my throat as my hands fall away from my mouth, and I ask the question I already know the answer to.

“What are you?”

A rush of sound, like a waterfall over a short drop onto smooth rocks, flows from his mouth. “Right. You would not understand,” he says. “I am a merman.”

My blood lights up in my veins. He’s just like the stories.

Half fish, half man. No other way to describe him—he’s definitely a man.

His eyes are disproportionately large for his face in an otherworldly way.

A bluish sheen shimmers from his skin, and his torso tapers to a powerful tail that ripples with muscle.

That’s where the similarities to the stories end.

Those all had merfolk with scales and gills.

There are no gills on his neck, or anywhere else I can see.

His tail isn’t covered in scales, either.

It’s more like the skin of a dolphin, though it’s no colour of mammal I’ve ever seen in a lifetime at sea.

Not a fish. Accurate.

My brain is spinning. Where are we? Why aren’t I cold? How am I not dead?

Most of all: I wasn’t crazy .

The merman swims to me, the soft blue from the cave walls shimmering the closer he gets.

Wait. That's where we are. In a cave. A glowing, underwater cave. This part of the Pacific has no species with bioluminescence like this, but it’s a beautiful way to light a cave.

And so eco friendly! More strange laughter erupts from my throat.

Almost dying has warped my sense of humour.

I tear my gaze away from the merman to glance at my bare arms. “Where are my clothes?”

“You are breathing underwater, and you want to know where your clothes are?”

“I need to start somewhere.”

The way he tilts his head has his dark green hair waving around him like kelp in the tides. “They were dragging you down, and will only hinder you in the depths.”

Makes sense. Last I checked, bra and underwear didn’t add too much drag, and those are nowhere to be seen. I’ve never been shy of my body, though, and he seems more curious than anything, so I put my nakedness out of my mind.

“What did you do to my eyes?” I ask next.

A rush of water sounds, then, “A sea jelly will feed from the debris that collects around your eyes, and in return you will be able to see.”

“Oh,” I say weakly. Symbiotic eye goobies. It’s not much worse than the mites that live on my eyelashes, so I ignore the chill that creeps down my spine. “Next question. I’m breathing sea water. How?”

The water sounds from his mouth pauses, like a glottal stop, and he points to a sea sponge on the cave floor.

“The a’wesh I put in your ... ” his large eyes close, as if searching for a word in a second language.

It’s such a human action. Then I notice he doesn’t have eyelashes, and when they open again, his pupils reflect the cave light back like a predator at night.

The illusion of humanity vanishes.

I brace for another wave of panic that doesn’t come. My heart is racing and my senses are heightened, but I don’t feel like I’m in danger.

Then again, I did chase a hunch into a storm I knew my boat couldn’t handle. My sense of self-preservation isn’t exactly well-honed.

“Windpipe,” he finishes in that weird, half-familiar language. “It balances essences, and allows us to take what we need from the water.”

“Essences?” I take a guess. “Oxygen?”

“I said essences .”

Okay, then.

I touch my throat. Something firm but pliant is lodged against my larynx.

Not painful, just ... present. I look at his long fingers, tipped with sharp claws and webbed to the first joint, and think of how far down my throat he would have had to shove it to get it into place.

How careful he must have been to not hurt me.

I draw in a ... is it still a breath if it’s water? The ocean fills my throat, hits the sponge, and relief fills my lungs. I try to mimic the sounds he made for a’wesh , the rushing water with a glottal stop, and his torso expands rapidly.

Is he ... laughing at me? I scoop water forwards, sending myself backwards through the water, and I get my first full look at my merman.

He’s eight feet from head to tail, easy.

And he’s not blue. At least, not completely.

The skin on his upper body is like sunlight dappling through a kelp forest. Spots of aquamarine, almost like freckles, start just below his pectorals, becoming larger, until they join and become solid aqua just below his belly button.

Belly button . He’s a mammal.

“Are you a hybrid between a human and a dolphin?” I blurt.

This earns me a look of genuine disgust.

That look I can decipher. I give a meek shrug. “Just asking.”

Anyway, last time I checked, dolphins don’t breathe underwater. Which we both clearly are.

“Nothing like this should be possible,” I murmur.

Nothing about him should be possible. Grey-green skin that looks like a tide pool. Hair that looks like seaweed. Bright blue tail that looks like the sun hitting clear waters.

No wonder we haven’t seen them before. He’s perfectly camouflaged.

The look he gives me is so alien I can’t tell if he’s laughing at me or angry at me. “There is much below the surface you humans don’t understand.”

“Speaking of understanding,” I continue, unfazed, “how do you understand me? How do I understand you?”

“We’re speaking English.” The shhh at the end of English hisses like water through a high pressure pipe.

“Thanks for that. How do you understand Englishhh ?” I draw out the syllable the way he did, and his lips draw back to reveal teeth that almost look human, except for the inch-long incisors.

“Shipwrecks. Fucking humans keep running aground. Usually in the same spots over and over again. Your kind does not learn well.”

Shipwrecks. Sailors. That would explain the swearing.

He— they? —save people.